It’s probably the only beach in the country where the rocks catch fire when
you light a barbecue. That’s because the bedrock at Kilve, on the West
Somerset coast, is rich in oil – indeed, the black stuff inside the stone is
believed to be among the finest quality shale oil in the world.

Not surprisingly, residents who live near the seven-mile coastal strip
between Hinckley Point nuclear power station and the ancient port of
Watchet, begin to murmur unease in times such as these when the world
experiences massive hikes in the price of crude.

Today the environs around the village of Kilve and its lonesome beach are
protected by some of the most robust environmental safeguards in Europe –
but that doesn’t mean to say that a day will dawn when fuel requirements
overturn ecological concerns. The oilfield at Kilve is huge. It was once
calculated that it contained no less than 10 billion tons of oil-bearing
rock.

The same investigations – carried out 76 years ago - showed that the rock
was even richer in oil than the famous Green River Beds in Colorado, which
at the time were believed to be the most oil-drenched shales in the world.

But could this peaceful and unspoilt part of the Westcountry one day find
itself the target of a massive oil-rush? Well, with oil prices looking set
to rise and rise, the locals may have good reason to look into the annals of
the area’s recent past. As the above figures show, the oil industry has been
tempted by what lies beneath the West Somerset coast before.

On several occasions newspapers – both local and national – have carried
headlines referring to the potential large-scale exploitation of the
region’s largest oilfield.

And even today if you go down to Kilve Pill, as the beach is known, there is
a stark reminder of the days when the oilmen started to dig for liquid gold.
It comes in the form of a massive, square, brink-lined chimney, which is all
that’s left to bear witness to the oil-rush of the 1920’s.

The trouble then was – and is – that the oil at Kilve does not come in
easily extracted liquid form. The old oil retort acts as a kind of constant
reminder of this fact - its job was to house the furnace in which rock was
literally boiled in order to extract the crude oil.

Oil shale is a term applied to a fine dark coloured rock that is rich enough
in bituminous material (called kerogen) capable of yielding petroleum after it has been distilled. The
kerogen in oil shale can be converted to oil through a chemical process
known as pyrolosis – a process
that is commonly known as “retorting”. The problem is that the rock must be
heated to between 450 and 500 °C in order to free up the oil, which is
obviously an expensive operation to perform.

Not that this worried the oilmen of the 1920’s - so excited were they by the
oil shales of the Somerset coast, their enthusiasm was even captured by
national newspaper headlines of the day: “Oil Romance of the West”
proclaimed one…

Trial borings revealed that the area covered by the shale amounted to a
sweeping 8000 acres and experts worked out that five acres, quarried to a
depth of 36 feet, would supply a whopping five million gallons of retorted
oil a year. A chemical analysis promised yields of from 30 to 99 gallons per
cubic ton.

So excited was Dr W Forbes-Leslie, one of the country’s leading oil experts
at the time, that he declared the shale was “of a class hitherto unknown in
England”.

The experimental retort was built at Kilve with other works further along
the coast at Doniford and Combwich. Plans were drawn up for the building of
a railway from Kilve to the port of Bridgwater.

Had the exploitation begun in earnest, then one of the wildest, least
visited and most starkly beautiful coastlines in the region would have been
torn up and ruined forever. The oil experts were looking at an area seven
miles long, extending one to two miles inland from the coast. An area which
has now been designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) –
much of which lies within the Quantock Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
(AONB), which is celebrating is 50th anniversary this year.

One of the experts at the time, Mr Latrett Parking, said that the oil shale
was contained in “one of the most remarkable formations ever exposed to
scientific examination”.

And he noted: “In an open grate it burns fiercely with a long flame. From
this evidence it would appear to be rich in oil; I am not surprised
therefore to find the chemist’s analysis giving yield of from 30 to 99.6
gallons per cubic ton.”

Rather ominously, as far as the area’s landscape was concerned, he
concluded: “The oil shale seams can be mined by quarrying along high, open
faces. These faces may be extended for several miles.”

The February 1924 issue of an international publication called The Petroleum
Times was beside itself with excitement. The editor himself put pen to paper
describing the “enormous potentialities” of the Kilve shales.

“That the commercial development of the shale deposits will lead to the
establishment of an important industry in Somerset is a foregone
conclusion,” he wrote. “Already the Great Western Railway Company has under
consideration the construction of a new line which will pass through shale
lands.”

In the end, financial backing failed and the entire project came to nothing.
But four decades later the Kilve shale beds were back in the news, with
newspapers reporting that oil companies were interested in extracting
natural gas from the area.

And again, these plans – if plans there were – came to nothing. So what of
the future? In a world where oil is becoming ever more costly and difficult
to find, will the lovely folds of the West Somerset oil fields ever find
themselves being exploited.

“Not in my lifetime,” said Alyn Jones, Somerset County Council’s minerals
and waste manager. “I can’t comment on the commercial question because
that’s constantly changing – but environmentally the area has designations
which afford it great protection.”

Mr Jones quoted the county’s official stance on mineral extraction, saying
that any such development adjacent to an AONB would only be permitted if it
did not cause “significant harm to the distinctive character and features of
the landscape”. No chance there then – not with quarry faces extending for
several miles...

Moreover, the county plan states: “Proposals for mineral development
affecting an SSSI will be subject to the most rigorous examination where the
need for the mineral will be balanced against environmental and other
considerations. Substantial weight will be given to the protection of such
sites and proposals that are likely to cause significant harm to such sites
will not be permitted unless it can be demonstrated that there is an
overwhelming need for the mineral that clearly outweighs the harm and cannot
reasonably be met elsewhere.”

So, the quarry faces might not fit happily into the county’s edicts, but
there is that niggling clause at the end about “overwhelming need”.

Where needs must, as they say. It obviously won’t happen yet awhile, but one
day in the distant future - when cars are silent because of a lack of fuel -
some bright spark might stand on the clifftop at Kilve and shout: “There’s
gold in them there beaches,” and begin to dig the rich seams of oil-shale
that lie underneath…